Ch 4 Game of Wool. Britain’s Best Knitter

Allira

This came IP on my Facebook feed today:

Shetland News

MSP Beatrice Wishart has written to the boss of Channel 4 to criticise the misrepresentation of Fair Isle knitting in its show Game of Wool.
Wishart has also lodged a motion in Holyrood highlighting the locally controversial elements of the first episode of the knitting show.
And she flagged up a 2024 Channel 4 press release in which Fair Isle was called “Fair Aisle”.

I was about to post something similar. There’s also her further comments which allude to the dumbing down of the Fair Isle’s culture.
After all the Great Pottery Throwdown wouldn’t give the contestants Plasticine to work with.

up up up not IP!

This came IP on my Facebook feed today:

Shetland News

MSP Beatrice Wishart has written to the boss of Channel 4 to criticise the misrepresentation of Fair Isle knitting in its show Game of Wool.
Wishart has also lodged a motion in Holyrood highlighting the locally controversial elements of the first episode of the knitting show.
And she flagged up a 2024 Channel 4 press release in which Fair Isle was called “Fair Aisle”.

NotSpaghetti

Allira maybe your teddy would like to make a friend of my husband's old (and special) teddy - who suffered an unfortunate trip to the barbers when quite young ...
🧸 🧸

My brothers both played barbers with their teddies too, I remember the rumpus!

Sorry my laptop keyboard is playing up, some very 'sticky keys' that always malfunction when I fail to preview!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=19kB4T5isNE

Just viewed this, found her very insightful. (or maybe hat's because she expressed what i felt!)

Allira maybe your teddy would like to make a friend of my husband's old (and special) teddy - who suffered an unfortunate trip to the barbers when quite young ...
🧸 🧸

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTJ8OfjnINM

I found this an interesting watch. Gordon the first contestant eliminated, and he says the steek was nothing to do with his elimination.

Tizliz

*Watching The Repair Shop, for instance, it seems everyone chosen has to have a back story now about loss or a traumatic time in their lives*

so agree, more story and less repairs.

My Teddy could relate his own traumatic sob story about how the little girl who owned him tried to mend his paws with green felt 😀
So embarrassing.

Sorry, Teddy.

Watching The Repair Shop, for instance, it seems everyone chosen has to have a back story now about loss or a traumatic time in their lives

so agree, more story and less repairs.

Wow! Millie that will be a muchlater week.

I love the beret too Primrose

There was no description of the stitches or how to read a pattern. Maybe that's too scary and would frighten or bore viewers.

If they hadn't called it fairisle but just patterns, that guy wouldn't have tried the steek and could have survived another week.

They're so lovely, Millie22

Which pattern is that? (or did you make it up? 😲)

Now why didn't
they do this as a
small project.

Di and Sheila ( the judges ) live near me in St.Andrews so I was excited to watch the programme. Ocht aye ,it was daft but I liked it . Lovely studio and beautiful wools. Have a look on you tube , there's a Di's Cabinet of Curiosity programme . It's a delightfully calming but inspiring show and tell of past designing and projects. I'm off to buy some wool !!

Absolutely agree with everything yo said about this programme!

Allira

Primrose53

My Mum was a great Fair Isle knitter and as a young bride she sat with her equally young neighbour outside their cottages and knitted slip overs for their husbands. I remember years later he was still wearing his.

This is the only item in Fair Isle I have ever knitted. A friend and I went on a one day workshop which was a good introduction. I did about 2” there and learned enough to finish it off (over some time) at home.

My Scottish friend knitted me a similar beret, Primrose 😀

Someone posted on Gransnet that older women should not wear berets but I wear mine!

Allira you have a very good friend as it takes a long time to knit!

I have never worn mine because I always wear my hair up in a top knot or messy bun so it wouldn’t sit right. I just look at it every so often. 😉

PaynesGrey

What came up in the Ravelry discussion were references to a Danish knitting show called Den Store Strikkedyst The Great Knit Off. It’s on You Tube.

Contestants sit in a semi circle on hard chairs and make small items: part of a sock, a Christmas bauble, a neck tie, an Alice band. Some of it is depressing not least because there seems to be a lot of “knit your life” challenges just as we had with the tank top on GoW.

The Alice band challenge was to knit something to reflect a dark period in the contestant’s life. Cue lots of stories and about death and dying with everyone crying or choking back tears. It felt horribly intrusive.

But that aside, the various challenges did give contestants a chance to show a variety of knitting skills. One one show, I saw something akin to the transformation challenge on Sewing Bee where they were given a plain white T shirt to transform with knitted embellishments.

That sounds more practical PaynesGray, an item small enough to be completed and to the best of the competitors' abilities in a certain time.

Watching The Repair Shop, for instance, it seems everyone chosen has to have a back story now about loss or a traumatic time in their lives.

Primrose53

My Mum was a great Fair Isle knitter and as a young bride she sat with her equally young neighbour outside their cottages and knitted slip overs for their husbands. I remember years later he was still wearing his.

This is the only item in Fair Isle I have ever knitted. A friend and I went on a one day workshop which was a good introduction. I did about 2” there and learned enough to finish it off (over some time) at home.

My Scottish friend knitted me a similar beret, Primrose 😀

Someone posted on Gransnet that older women should not wear berets but I wear mine!

My Mum was a great Fair Isle knitter and as a young bride she sat with her equally young neighbour outside their cottages and knitted slip overs for their husbands. I remember years later he was still wearing his.

This is the only item in Fair Isle I have ever knitted. A friend and I went on a one day workshop which was a good introduction. I did about 2” there and learned enough to finish it off (over some time) at home.

Parsley3

Unfortunately, Tom is not a skilled knitter if the garments he wears are his own work so no credit to him for any comments on the contestants work.. I am glad that the Shetland knitters are speaking out about the inaccuracies in the programme and I am surprised that the judges, who should know better, went along with allowing patterns that were not actually Fair Isle to be accepted . I will try again next week and look for improvements.

This is exactly what I thought and I too am glad the Shetland knitters have spoken out. Stranded colour work is very different to FairIsle as is intarsia. TD’s garment showed no knitting skill and he wasn’t a good choice as presenter. The judges were rather dull though very skilled in their field. I was disappointed but will watch again in the hope that it improves.

Unfortunately, Tom is not a skilled knitter if the garments he wears are his own work so no credit to him for any comments on the contestants work.. I am glad that the Shetland knitters are speaking out about the inaccuracies in the programme and I am surprised that the judges, who should know better, went along with allowing patterns that were not actually Fair Isle to be accepted . I will try again next week and look for improvements.

I actually thought, -albeit cynically-, that Tom's knitting hobby (shown frequently on the box in dive downtime) was the impetus for the series.
Famous AND a passionate hobby?
Let's see how we can use in a tv show

As for the garments Tom Daley and the two presenters were wearing - they would not inspire anyone to pick up a pair of knitting needles!

Thanks ixion
There are a few groups on Facebook commenting on this programme and many, but not all, of the comments are unfavourable.

It just seemed to be a travesty of Fairisle knitting. It would have been better to ask them to design and make a sample piece in the correct yarn on the right size needles.

As for the unspeakable sofa covers 😲

Shetland's Organisation for Knitters weren't too happy about the Fairisle challenge.
Here are their comments on their Facebook page -
(Sorry about the length, but worth a read).

"The Game of Wool @thegameofwool was a hotly anticipated show, in Shetland and through the world. Unfortunately, the knitters of Shetland were shocked and saddened by the way Fair Isle knitting, a living heritage craft native to the United Kingdom, was depicted in episode one of the show.
Despite Gordon successfully cutting his knitting (or steeking, as it is called elsewhere), the method was vilified as the reason why he was ejected. Gordon @manknitted has spoken out on this matter, explaining that the reasons why he was unable to finish his tank top were because he needed to take his work back, had incorporated additional features, and was working with imperfectly modified needles.
Rather than using the other contestants’ and hosts’ fear of Gordon cutting his knitting as a moment to teach viewers that cutting your knitting properly, as Gordon did, is a safe technique—something we all witnessed—and instead building drama around his actual difficulties, the show leaned into the misunderstandings about cutting your knitting, perpetuating negative misconceptions about Fair Isle knitting techniques. This is especially disheartening from a UK-based show meant to encourage more people to take up knitting.
There were additional issues. The most glaring was referring to the small patterns of Fair Isle as ‘peeries’. Peerie is a descriptive word. Small patterns in Fair Isle are referred to as ‘peerie patterns’. Many of the designs accepted as Fair Isle in the episode are more accurately described as stranded colourwork. The over application of the term Fair Isle to refer to any colourwork not only muddies the boundaries of this living heritage craft, but it erases the other forms of colourwork knitting in the world, which deserve to be named.
There are other troubling issues being raised about the show that we will allow others to speak to directly. Shetland knitters are busy, yet again, taking on the cultural and emotional labour related to seeing their heritage misrepresented to the wider public. Many have been speaking out, and more are planning to comment in the coming days. We’ll be sharing their posts, hoping the show will acknowledge and correct their errors."